Half - Lion: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India

by Vinay Sitapati

  Around this time, Rao left for the prime minister’s office, where more politicians and officials joined him. It was here that Dr Srinath Reddy came to check up on Rao.

  The Cabinet meeting was scheduled for 6 p.m., since Arjun Singh was travelling outside Delhi, and Rao wanted him to be part of any decision made. When the Cabinet met, ‘No one could say anything. We were so shocked,’ one minister remembers. ‘Then [C.K] Jaffer Sharief [the senior-most Muslim leader] began to talk. He said what happened was terrible.’ Many Congressmen were inclined to blame Rao. Nehru-Gandhi loyalist M.L. Fotedar shouted at the prime minister for failing to protect the mosque. Rao said little, but later told an aide, ‘I will never sit with that man again.’ A decision was taken to dismiss the UP government at 6.30 p.m.85

  Almost simultaneous to the Cabinet meeting, at 6.45 p.m., Kalyan Singh announced his resignation as chief minister of UP.86 At 7 p.m., Rao’s diary shows, he met with ‘Sh. Shahabuddin and Others’. By this time, riots had broken out across India. Thousands of Muslims flocked to Delhi’s historic Jama Masjid for the evening prayers, worried that the sun was setting on the India they knew. The Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid called for Muslims to react peacefully, adding, ‘It is a major tragedy. Our hearts are broken.’87

  That night, Rao gave an emergency broadcast to the nation.88 ‘I am speaking to you this evening under the grave threat that has been posed to the institutions, principles and ideals on which the constitutional structure of our republic has been built.’ He added, ‘What has happened today in Ayodhya where the Babri Masjid has been demolished, is a matter of great shame and concern for all Indians . . . I would like to say very clearly that we shall no longer suffer the Machiavellian tactics of the communal forces in this country.’ He blamed the Kalyan Singh government, ‘which has totally failed in its primary duty, to which they had pledged themselves time and again, to protect the structure’.

  ‘I appeal to you,’ he ended, ‘to maintain calm, peace and harmony at this grave moment of crisis.’89

  At 9 p.m., the President of India signed the proclamation for Central rule in UP. At 10 p.m., Rao went to meet him at Rashtrapati Bhavan to apprise him of the situation.90 The Central forces had yet to take over the Babri Masjid complex. It was only the next morning, 7 December 1992, that they entered the complex. They faced no resistance. The kar sevaks, delirious with success, were receding. They were leaving behind the pickaxed ruins of Indian secularism.

  As if to make up for lost time, Rao swung into action on 7 December. He met a series of Muslims leaders—who were all furious at his inability to protect the mosque.91 On 8 December, his appointment diary shows, he met the ‘Naib Imam, Jamma Masjid + 8’.92 Two days after, the Rao government banned the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal, declaring them as ‘unlawful’ organizations.

  There was pressure on Rao to rebuild the mosque on the same spot. In another error of judgement,93 he decided not to. But he was not the only one who thought so. The minister of defence, Sharad Pawar, sent Rao a private memo on 12 December, cautioning against building the mosque on the same place. ‘If the masjid is rebuilt at the same site . . . [the] issue is likely to be exploited again and again for spearheading mass movements. In such a situation the minority community will have to continuously face insecurity and tension.’94

  On 15 December, Narasimha Rao dismissed the state governments of three BJP-ruled states in north India: Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. The ostensible reason was that the chief ministers of all three states were members of the just-banned RSS.95 Newspapers criticized the move, with the Times of India calling it an ‘overreaction’, and the Hindustan Times terming it a ‘political blunder’.96 These dismissals were challenged in the Supreme Court. The court held that secularism was part of the basic structure of the Constitution, and states that violated secularism could be lawfully dismissed under Article 356. The court, however, laid out a new, higher, standard of scrutiny which the invocation of Article 356 would be subject to, in effect limiting the Centre’s discretion to dismiss a state government.97 Had this new, tougher, standard been applied to a hypothetical decision of Rao’s to remove Kalyan Singh before 6 December, the Supreme Court may well have held it to be unconstitutional.

  On 16 December 1992, Rao set up the Justice Liberhan Commission to inquire into the demolition. The Liberhan Commission would submit its report a staggering eighteen years later—exonerating Rao but detailing a planned conspiracy involving L.K. Advani, M.M. Joshi and other BJP and VHP leaders.98

  As we examined in an earlier chapter, the BJP brought a no-confidence motion against the Rao government the next day. The prime minister ensured that his nemesis Arjun Singh was tasked with defending him in Parliament. When Rao’s chance came to speak, his self-defence was that he had trusted the word of Kalyan Singh, and that Article 356 did not allow him to dismiss a state government ‘in anticipation’ of law and order breaking down.99 The BJP’s no-confidence motion failed, with the secular opposition supporting Rao’s government. Rao soon reshuffled his Cabinet, bringing in more loyalists and dropping Fotedar.

  A man who nurtured grievances, Rao felt betrayed by the Hindu saints and politicians. He was convinced that Advani knew of the conspiracy and had lied to him. When Arjun Singh, N.D. Tiwari and others in the Congress began openly criticizing Rao, an aide told the prime minister he should take action. Rao replied, ‘After what Advani has done to me, what can Arjun Singh do?’

  On 24 October 1994, the Supreme Court passed judgment on the 6 December case. It found no fault with the prime minister, pinning the blame entirely on the Kalyan Singh government. By then the rest of the Congress was publicly rallying around Rao, even as Arjun Singh and others were being sidelined. A rare exception was Mani Shankar Aiyar, the public school-educated Congressman with a penchant for British wit. Critical of Rao’s failure to protect the mosque, Aiyar quipped, ‘Death is not a precondition for rigour mortis.’100 This comment reached Rao. Aiyar was never taken into government.

  While Arjun Singh had publicly supported the prime minister right after 6 December, he was privately manoeuvring. In February 1993, the government tabled a ‘white paper’ in Parliament on the events of 6 December. Naresh Chandra, who wrote the report, says, ‘The finalization of the paper had posed difficulties because Arjun Singh kept suggesting changes that had the potential to unnecessarily embarrass the prime minister.’ When Arjun Singh, Natwar Singh, N.D. Tiwari and others later began criticizing Rao’s leadership, they brought up his failure to protect the mosque as evidence that Rao was communal.

  This accusation got a fillip after 1998 when Sonia Gandhi joined the Congress. As we saw in the last chapter, many of those whom Rao had sidelined or foisted hawala cases on had by then returned to the party. Blaming Narasimha Rao for Babri Masjid killed two birds with one stone. Sonia’s Congress could escape blame, which would allow it to reach out to the Muslims who had left the party. And Rao, who posed a threat to the Nehru-Gandhi legacy, would stand discredited. Gradually, the belief took hold within the party that Rao had wanted to destroy the mosque. ‘Every Congressmen believes that Rao and Jiten Prasada, Brahmins both, plotted,’ Jairam Ramesh says.101 Salman Khurshid remembers: ‘There was a time when saying pro-Rao [statements] was a problem. If I said it in my constituency I would be accused of being pro-demolition.’102 Rahul Gandhi even publicly claimed that ‘Had the Gandhi family been there in politics [in 1992], Babri Masjid demolition would not have taken place.’103

  In 2002, anti-Muslim violence broke out in Gujarat. The violence killed around 1272 people, most of whom were Muslim. The police and state officials looked on, in some cases aiding the mobs. This was eerily similar to the UP government’s actions a decade earlier. Fingers were pointed at the BJP chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, since the Constitution vested in him power over the police and administration. The prime minister at the time was Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He could have either imposed President’s rule or dismissed Modi using intra-party mechanisms. He
did neither. Yet, unlike Narasimha Rao, Vajpayee is rarely blamed. The central question of the Gujarat riots has never been the culpability of the prime minister.

  In 2014, the website Cobrapost did a sting operation on several BJP and VHP leaders at the frontlines of the demolition. They reported that these leaders spoke of a well-planned conspiracy104 and ‘openly acknowledge’ Rao’s supportive role.105 These leaders did not claim to have spoken to Rao, and the website provided no corroborative evidence. The allegations were not, however, rebutted. The demolition of Babri Masjid has become the principal taint on Narasimha Rao’s legacy.

  Meanwhile, Kalyan Singh was awarded a day’s imprisonment for deceiving the Supreme Court. He was later re-elected as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, and in 2014, became governor of Rajasthan—a constitutional gift for a man who had so blithely disregarded the Constitution. L.K. Advani rose to become deputy prime minister, but never became king. Arjun Singh returned to the Congress, and served as human resource development minister from 2004 to 2009—the same ministry he had held under Rao. Singh died in 2011, his dream of becoming prime minister unfulfilled.

  The Allahabad high court passed judgment on the original title dispute in 2010. It declared that the Babri mosque was built above a Hindu temple, and that the God Ram was indeed born on that exact spot. The court ordered that the disputed land be divided three ways, with a portion each to two Hindu and one Muslim group.106 The order was soon stayed by the Supreme Court. As of 2016, the matter drags on in the courts, mosque destroyed, temple unbuilt.

  There is no question that Rao made the wrong decision on Babri Masjid. He should have imposed President’s rule between 1 November and 24 November 1992. This decision would have been constitutionally suspect and politically fraught. The Supreme Court might have held the move illegal; the BJP would surely have brought a no-confidence motion in Parliament, Rao’s rivals in the Congress would have blamed him, and the prime minister might have lost his job. But it was a risk that should have been taken. The fall of Babri Masjid was an event that shook the foundations of independent India like few others. Many Indians woke up to a different country on 7 December, and still blame the prime minister of the day. History has judged Narasimha Rao harshly.

  But this is a judgement made with the benefit of hindsight, after knowing how events unfolded on 6 December. Knowing only what Rao did before 6 December, what can we fairly accuse him of?

  To accuse him of plotting the demolition is a lie, and will remain one until contrary evidence emerges—which it has not in the twenty-four years since. Not only is there no hard proof that Rao aided the conspiracy, there is plenty to indicate that he tried to protect the mosque through secret talks with Hindu leaders.

  To accuse Rao of indecision is also untrue. As we saw on the economy, Narasimha Rao could speedily make up his mind if he felt the right decision also made for good politics. In the lead-up to 6 December, all options carried political risks. Faced with such difficult choices, Rao did decide. By mid-November 1992, Rao had weighed the pros and cons and decided that he would not take over Uttar Pradesh. He did this because no one was willing to take a stand and push for Central rule—not his Cabinet colleagues in the Congress, not his law officers, not the state governor, not even the Supreme Court. For Rao to impose Central rule in these conditions would have risked the stability of his own government. Even Pranab Mukherjee—who is critical of Rao’s handling of the Babri Masjid episode in some respects—says that Rao faced a ‘Hobson’s choice’, since the decision to dismiss Kalyan Singh might not have been backed by Parliament, where the Congress was in a minority.107 As Rao himself put it, ‘The centre’s plight was that of a person whose child has been abducted by the enemy.’108 He therefore decided to protect the mosque by securing secret deals with an array of Hindutva groups. On the night of 5 December, he went to sleep believing he had protected the mosque without the political risk of invoking Article 356.

  What then can Rao be legitimately criticized for?

  His error was that, against the judgement of his officials (and, it must be admitted, Arjun Singh), Rao reposed his faith in members of the VHP, BJP, RSS and sundry Hindu gurus. To be fair to Rao, he began these informal talks only when he realized he had few formal options. But he should have known that people like L.K. Advani were either in on the conspiracy (as the Liberhan Commission says they were) or were riding a tiger they could not control. For a statesman with a preternatural instinct for his own weaknesses, Rao’s overconfidence in his ability to convince Hindu groups must go down as a serious failure of judgement.

  Rao’s desperation to protect his own minority government also clouded his instincts. Salman Khurshid says, ‘The tragedy about Rao sahib is that his attempt to do consensus building is what destroyed him.’109 This ‘consensus building’ was driven by Narasimha Rao’s interest in appeasing both the Hindu as well as Muslim vote bank, instead of a single-minded focus on protecting the mosque. Rao wanted to protect the mosque and protect Hindu sentiments and protect himself. He ended up with the mosque destroyed, Hindus unattracted to the Congress, and his own reputation in tatters.

  How grave has this error proved for India? It led to the killing of many innocents, mainly Muslims, in the riots that followed. It also symbolized for many the passing of Nehruvian secularism.

  But that demise was not caused by the destruction of a disused mosque, symbolic and symptomatic though that may have been. It stemmed from the rise of the BJP. As long as the mosque stood, the BJP could play on the Hindu humiliation they claimed it symbolized, and rise from a party with two seats in 1984 to 120 seats in 1991. Ironically, the end of the mosque also ended its deployment as a campaign issue. In the national elections held in 1996, the BJP did not campaign on building a temple in Ayodhya, nor has it done so in any subsequent election. As Salman Khurshid argues, ‘If you look at it in a tragic way, with the destruction of Babri Masjid, the mobilizing potential of the BJP reduced. I think the intensity or passion against the structure ended.’110

  The demolition of the mosque was also not the reason for the Congress’s decline in north India. The party had already lost the Muslim vote in Uttar Pradesh by 1989 and the Hindu vote by 1991. Though the demolition angered Muslims, it did not change voting patterns in India.

  In the final analysis, therefore, the enduring political victim of the Babri demolition was Narasimha Rao himself. Some of this was his doing, much of it deliberate defamation by his own party. As Narasimha Rao put it so presciently in his book on the events of 6 December, ‘. . . those responsible for the vandalism had got not only the Babri Masjid demolished, but along with the Babri Masjid it was me whom they were trying to demolish.’111

  13

  Look East, Look West

  When it came to both the Babri Masjid and the economy, Narasimha Rao had inherited an inbox from hell. When he became the PM in June 1991, Kalyan Singh had just been elected UP chief minister, and India had foreign exchange reserves for just two weeks’ worth of imports.1 Rao faced intense political scrutiny on these two issues. Opposition parties and his own Congress had ideological stakes on the economy and Babri Masjid, and this limited Rao’s ability to find solutions. It is under these weighty political constraints that Rao made the right call on the economy and the wrong one on 6 December.

  Foreign policy was the other noxious bequest the prime minister inherited. But unlike with the economy and Babri Masjid, international affairs resonated less in domestic politics. To be sure, Israel would always be seen through the lens of the Muslim voter, and the Left would resent any chumminess with the United States. But there were plenty of hidden corners for Rao and his diplomats to play their games.

  The world was the one stage where Narasimha Rao could write his own script.

  For much of India’s independence, the world was divided into two armed camps: the United States and the Soviet Union. India had taken sides in the Cold War, with the Soviet Union supplying it with armaments, ideology, as well as a veto in the Un
ited Nations. When Narasimha Rao became prime minister, however, revolutions in the Soviet Union were tearing at India’s safety net in the world. An added problem was that the balance of payments crisis required loans and investments from the United States, a country previously on the other side of the Berlin Wall. Even India’s neighbourhood looked uncertain. China—with whom India shared a long border and had fought a war—had spent the last decade refashioning itself into an economic powerhouse. India’s mortal enemy, Pakistan, was both sponsoring terrorism in the Kashmir valley as well as alleging human rights abuse in global fora. The countries of East Asia, whom Jawaharlal Nehru had termed ‘Coca Cola governments’,2 had since entered the First World, shattering Indian pretensions of Third World leadership. And the sands of the Middle East were shifting westward, leaving India in no man’s land.

  The idealism and liberal internationalism that had powered Nehruvian foreign policy was no more in tune with India’s diminished role on the world stage. Bound by its own licence raj, India’s foreign relations were in need of liberalization.

  Unlike in the case of the economy, Narasimha Rao was himself an expert on international affairs. He had been foreign minister in the 1980s under both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv. Of the ten languages he knew well, three were foreign: Spanish, Persian and of course, English. Rao’s personal library included books by the international relations theorist Henry Kissinger, as well as essays by Samuel Huntington and Zbigniew Brzezinski.3 He would painstakingly mark important passages. On his overseas trips as foreign minister, he would spend the day in meetings and evenings roaming the streets unescorted. ‘Before you go to a country,’ he lectured his grandson Shravan, ‘you should read about it fully.’4